


tactical retreat

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-17 22:40:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7288915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s manipulating her. She knows that proud tone to his voice is only meant to creep under her skin, but her knowledge of that fact doesn’t stop it working.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tactical retreat

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the SUPER OLD PROMPT, "We’re all that person on the inside," which I didn't quite manage to fit in exactly but its spirit lives on ... or something.
> 
> Also this is 100% the result of lingering frustrations over how Jemma's s2 plotlines were handled. The writers make no apologies and neither do I.

“We should call this in,” the man at the door says. He looks unconscionably young to be working for HYDRA, an effect amplified by his current excitement. He’s meant to be keeping watch for her people, but Jemma gets the idea he’s more worried about his own coming upon them and stealing his glory. “You know how much Whitehall’s offering for her?”

Jemma chooses to scowl at him rather than the man he’s talking to. It’s difficult, between her position on the ground and the pain she’s currently in, to pull off a suitable expression but the blood from her head wound must help well enough because he actually gulps.

His eyes skitter away from hers to the man kneeling in front of her. “ _Ward_ ,” he pleads. “Come on, we got _Jemma Sim_ -”

The young face is gone, replaced by a gaping mess of flesh and bone that will feature in Jemma’s nightmares for no small amount of time to come. Ward returns his gun to its holster with a longsuffering sigh, as though murdering a man - without even bothering to look him in the eye while he does it - were a great burden he’s been forced to bear.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he says - _her_ he has no problem looking in the eye, which is not at all comforting, “he _hit_ you.”

Jemma continues to gape, not at all sure how she’s meant to respond to such a sentiment coming from the man who _dropped her from a plane_.

As if to emphasize his point - his insane, nonsensical point - he leans forward and reaches for her injury. She’s been cuffed to a pipe on the wall but it doesn’t stop her jerking away. He frowns at her, exactly the way he used to when she let her curiosity spur her into disregarding his orders in the field.

She’d like to snap at him that he has no right - either to touch her or to look at her as though he cares - but his expression clouds and his head tips to one side. He has her comm in his ear and has been listening to it for the last several minutes. When he took it, he told the young agent that he was going to see what SHIELD’s up to here, keep HYDRA one step ahead, but in light of the murder and his utter lack of move to pass along intel, Jemma does wonder what he’s really about.

Whatever it is, she’s not going to let him cow her. He’s a monster, he’s scum, he doesn’t deserve her fear. She lifts her chin to settle all the disdain she can muster on his shoulders.

“Once a traitor, always a traitor, I suppose?” she asks haughtily.

It takes a moment for him to react and, when he does, it’s less than she would have hoped for. “At least I don’t talk about my friends behind their backs.”

“What’s that supposed to-?” She cuts off when he forces the comm back into her ear and, as she hears what’s on the channel, all her anger goes rushing out of her.

“-bandoned him,” Mack’s saying. He agreed to come on this mission under duress when Fitz plainly wanted to be nowhere near her. Not that she can blame him for backing out of a mission on her account. They had a terrible row last night over her leaving for HYDRA; it was very loud and very public and she doubts she’ll ever be able to live the shame of it down. That it’s come up now, when whatever Ward’s done is, she presumes (she _hopes_ ), making it look like her comm is dead, isn’t much of a surprise. And neither, she hates to admit, is Skye’s response.

“She left all of us. But she had a good reason.”

“One she didn’t tell you about. In my experience, an agent goes undercover, they tend to tell their friends - just in case they never make it back.”

“Yeah,” Skye says slowly. “But none of this is helping me find her.”

“Yeah, yeah. Keep-”

Ward pulls the comm away and slips it back into his own ear. He settles back on his heels, his attention all on her instead of what he’s hearing. “They talk about you like that a lot?”

It’s none of Ward’s business. In fact, he is the last person who should be allowed to know anything about the team’s inner-workings anymore.

All that aside, she shrugs one pathetic shoulder before she can help it.

His brow furrows and he looks genuinely annoyed. “You want me to kill this Mack guy?”

She’s so caught off guard by the offer that she doesn’t think to respond until he’s moved off to pull weapons off the corpse blocking the doorway.

“No!” she snaps.

He shoots her a look. “You sure?”

She scowls but it falls away when she realizes he’s not grabbing weapons, but the medkit clipped to the man’s waist. He returns with it and settles closer to her than before to tend the cut on her forehead. She winces when he wipes away the blood and hates that his shushing and soothing has an actual effect on her.

“You’re gonna need stitches,” he says while he presses butterfly bandages to her forehead.

“What are you doing?”

His hands still and that’s a problem because his skin is warm against hers and the extended contact means that, when it finally does end, she’s left cold. “I think the better question,” he says slowly, “is what are _you_ doing?”

She lifts her hands, causing a terrible clanging between the cuffs and the pipe. 

One side of his mouth lifts in that smile. They talked about it, her and Fitz and Skye, after everything. How wrong, how cruel, how different it was from the smile they’d come to know. She never told them she _did_ know that smile. She hadn’t seen it often, just once or twice, but at the time she’d let it fill her up, buoy the crush she knew was only going to see her heartbroken. She didn’t know how to tell them that she’d seen but never understood.

“I mean, what are you still doing with _SHIELD_?”

She balks. Maybe a traitor like him would never understand but there is nowhere else on Earth she could go. Oh, technically she’s _able_ to leave, but there isn’t a single bone in her body that wouldn’t be shamed by the move. She won’t abandon her principles.

The thought - the word, that “abandon” - cuts her deeply, even coming from her own mind, and she’s still feeling raw when he continues.

“They don’t appreciate you - hell, they’re _still_ talking about you, that other new guy’s even joined in. And I’m guessing this happens a lot.”

She shifts, more uncomfortable with the line of inquiry than her position on the floor.

“So why stay? Whitehall might not like you much, but you could go to any of the other heads - hell, you bring enough SHIELD intel with you, Whitehall might even let bygones be bygones.”

Relief washes over her. This, she can answer. “I would _never_ join HYDRA. Unlike someone I could mention, I’m not some weak-willed sycophant hoping for a pat on the head.”

The skin around Ward’s eyes wrinkles and his smile sharpens. She’s no longer used to his expression and her relief doubles, only to evaporate when he brushes her bloody hair behind her ear. She feels his light touch all the way to her toes.

Maybe she’s weaker than she thought.

“You’re wrong,” he says and his voice sounds kind. “I didn’t join HYDRA out of weakness, I did it from a place of _strength_. If I’d flinched at the name and the loose morals, I’d be dead now. But I saw an opportunity and I took it. I’m a _survivor_.”

Against her will, her eyes move to the scar on his forehead. He recovered from all of his suicide attempts unnervingly quickly but that one, which had more potential than either of the others for complications and which was suffered when he was still weak from them, has always bothered her.

“We _both_ are,” he says, pressing a finger to her chest for emphasis, “deep down inside. You may be a self-sacrificing idiot some of the time, Simmons, but you always find a way to make it out alive.”

He’s manipulating her. She knows that proud tone to his voice is only meant to creep under her skin, but her knowledge of that fact doesn’t stop it working.

“And that’s why I don’t get what you’re still doing with SHIELD. They think they’ll be better off without you?”

She flinches. It’s likely he’s gleaned such a sentiment from some complaint one of the others has made about Fitz being better while she was gone but it’s all too possible he means exactly what he says. Perhaps they really do wish she were still away.

“So give them what they want and take care of yourself while you do it,” Ward goes on, either unaware he’s delivered her such a painful blow or determined to push her until she breaks. “HYDRA would be glad to have you.”

“Well I wouldn’t be glad to have them,” she says with much less venom than she’d like.

Ward nods as though expecting as much. “Fair enough. But you ever change your mind-” he takes the comm out and slips it in her ear again- “you find a way to let me know; I’ll take care of the rest.”

“-saying I _want_ something to have happened to her, I’m just saying Fitz’d be better off.”

Ward gives her his back, heading for the door without the least bit of hesitation. Jemma is grateful as it allows her to close her eyes against the pain.

“Shut up, Hunter.”

“You didn’t see it, what he was like before. He was getting better.”

“And now, here we are, abandoning the mission because the great undercover agent’s gotten herself in trouble.”

“Hey! No one’s abandoned the mission and it’s not like Simmons planned this. Any of us could’ve lost communications.”

“Yeah, but it didn’t happen to any of us, it happened to-”

“Ward!” Jemma calls. Her throat burns but not from the word.

She immediately hopes he’s too far gone, that he hasn’t heard her. Despite that, she’s relieved when he appears in the doorway. She shakes her ear towards him and he obligingly hurries over to remove the comm just as Bobbi’s attempt to defend Jemma turns into an admission that she’s incapable of taking care of herself in any sort of combat situation.

Ward hovers beside her, patiently waiting for her to speak.

Without looking at him, she says, “I won’t give HYDRA intelligence on the team - or on SHIELD’s current projects,” she amends, realizing Ward’s no doubt given them plenty of the former already.

Her heart constricts. She’s really doing this, really about to compromise her morals and, truly this time, abandon her friends.

But they want her gone. And Fitz is better without her.

Ward’s hands are as warm as his smile when they brush her wrists to undo the cuffs. “Von Strucker’s working on powered people; you’ve always been interested in that, right?”

Her stomach churns at the thought. Research into powered people - HYDRA’s version at any rate - will no doubt involve all sorts of immoral practices.

“Or not,” Ward says quickly. “There are other options. We can shop around, see who you like best.”

He lifts her more than helps her to her feet and she’s grateful when he keeps his hold on her arms. She’s feeling rather unsteady on her numb legs and her brain seems stuck on the reality of what she’s just agreed to do. The fact that she can still back out, can spit in his face and make a break for it, isn’t so much lost on her as she’s lost to it. She can’t think past the simple reality that, even if she were to turn the tables on him now, she was utterly sincere in her acceptance.

His calloused fingers tip her chin. “We’ll stick together,” he says once he’s caught her eye. “I’ll never abandon you, Simmons.”

It’s not the unnerving sincerity that causes fear to curl in her gut as he pulls her out the door, it’s how comforted she is by it.

 


End file.
